Cut It Out With a Chainsaw: A Grell Madam Red Fic
by superlabelgirl
Summary: On a slow night, Grell remembers the only person to understand his madness. Oneshot set in Grell's headspace. Please review.


Grell perched on a rooftop, frowning. It was a slow night. Worse than that, it was a dull night. The wet grey sky hanging over London pressed its weight onto the brick buildings, the gas lamps, the cobblestone streets. The moon was barely visible behind the thick clouds, their cold damp sucking out all color and contrast. The sky was just so boring, boring its boring blandness into a city already lacking spice. _Boring its boring_ – he liked that. He grinned, displaying his sharp teeth as he snipped his tiny scissors in the direction of the clouds. _Boring their boring boring, boring boring booooring._

Grell looked at his scissors and sighed. He missed his chainsaw desperately, and working without it made him realize how all those amputees he created must have felt. There were times he hated his job, the strict regulations and the humorless faces of his co-workers making him feel like an artist stranded among tax attorneys. The nerve of them, taking his perfectly modified scythe away! And why? Because it didn't meet mass and volume regulations or some such nonsense. And of course, they had given him a rookie's weapon in its place, insulting him with scissors after he had mastered a chainsaw. But he had accepted them because they were weapons, and he decided to be the best, most vicious safety scissors shinigami there ever was. The ways he could mutilate and desecrate with them ran on a loop in his head, and his smile grew. As long as he adhered to the horrid rules for a while, none of the higher-ups could fault him for creativity. But fate was being doubly cruel, not giving him a properly marked target for hours. He sighed again, releasing a wet grey plume into the air, and his whole body seemed to itch. The night was far too dull. Didn't any of the other shinigami see that? Didn't any of the sad little humans below him see it, as they went on fighting and fucking and going to sleep? Could anyone see that pure passion flowed in each trivial life? Could anyone understand that all that this grey city needed was a splash of red?

He crouched down, rubbing the edge of his red coat between his fingers. The answer, he realized, was yes. Or at least, it had been yes once. _Someone had understood,_ he thought, rocking absently on his spiked heels. _She had understood._

Grell crossed his hands over his knees, allowing himself a moment of introspection. It had been over a year since Grell had found Angelina, his precious Madam Red, huddled over her first bloody corpse and still riding the thrill of her first time. He couldn't believe it had been so long since he had decided that she was the one, his psychopath fledgling, deserving of all his best attention. Since their torrid, colorful adventures. Since he had cut her down.

When he saw her for the first time, staring at the blood on her hands, something close to love had turned his blood more crimson. That she was a woman made it all the sweeter. Grell had always had a complicated relationship with women. It made him glad that he had always had such a simple relationship with men. He always knew what he wanted with men, looked specifically for his type. He liked strong features, hard bodies, refusal of sentimentality, and if he could find a healthy dose of sadism? _Be still my heart! _He smiled like a shark, his mouth full of sharp edges. With men, he could lust unabashedly without really caring, without getting truly caught up in those troublesome emotions.

With women it was different. He never quite knew how he felt about them. As feminine as he could act sometimes, Grell was a man and had never once felt like a woman. There were things he admired about them surely: the luxury of beauty and fashion, the delights of flirting and seduction, and not to mention red dye, red lipstick, red nails, red everywhere he'd care to look. But with every woman that he found, he found things that turned his stomach. The softness, the cowering, the heartbreak, these were entanglements he simply couldn't abide by. The phenomenon of motherhood was particularly disgusting to him, the inexplicable tenderness for this little mewling thing expelled from their bodies. And when women saw death, so many reacted poorly. He gave many ladies' lives a splash of his favorite red, and so often they fell into keening and crying, covering themselves with silly delicate black. Indeed, many women couldn't commit violence without toxic regret, and a good female serial killer was so hard to find. Just once, he wanted a woman that met his expectations, and when he saw the bloodlust in dear Angelina's eyes, his expectations were exceeded. She had been in love, yes, but she was rejected. She had yearned for a child, but her body could no longer produce one. She had seen death, but in place of traditional mourning he felt in her only an intoxicating emptiness. But most of all, she wanted a red world as much as he did. So when she wanted to paint the streets with the insides of tacky whores, stupid and undeserving of their fruitful bodies, he was practically begging to oblige.

At her request, he had taken on the guise of her faithful butler. This had perhaps been because her recently rediscovered nephew, a dreadfully serious boy named Ciel, had returned with a dashing, deliciously subservient butler of his own. He could not fault her for this, for he agreed with her that the new butler was absolute eye candy. Of course, he was also a demon, and a rather saucy one at that, putting in almost no effort to appear ordinary. The smoldering evil that Grell adored in demons matched beautifully with this one's new human skin, and both he and his Madam took their sweet time staring.

Although both butlers knew what the other was immediately, Madam Red suggested that Grell appear a little less extraordinary, not wanting to draw outside suspicion. He had taken to this fully, creating a character, delighting at the outrageous idea that he was clumsy and meek. The two of them had laughed together as he perfected his falsetto stutter, his tray-laden stumbles, his looks begging her for forgiveness.

But despite their silliness, as time went on, Grell found that he began to take his service to his Madam quite seriously. He hadn't thought that he would like doing such mundane things as cooking and cleaning, but Madam Red had insisted that he was hers and that he should serve her properly. He had complained, and she had locked him into a struggle for power that he sometimes liked conceding. Soon the two of them formed a bond unlike anything that he had had before. He came to enjoy kneeling, making her blush even more red as he said "Yes, my Lady." He loved guiding her hand through her vicious exercises, killing at her command, watching her become comfortable with the feel of blood on her skin. Without planning it, she had truly become his Mistress. Though he never felt the need to prove himself to others, he had taken always quietly taken offense to the idea that he had been a horrible butler. No one would ever know how faithful he had been, obeying his Mistress even unto her last order.

They had fucked occasionally, but their closeness was more than that of mere lovers. They both had other partners, but it did not matter. It was not even typical for Grell to want a woman so badly; in fact, Grell and Madam Red generally lusted after similar men. But Madam Red had always been a special case. He took delight in how she experienced the prowess he had picked up over the centuries. She had loved the control of being a master, but he had always challenged her for that dominance in bed. It was simply delicious to remind his crimson lover how masculine he could be if needed.

Grell recalled the night things had changed perfectly. It started well enough, with them dispensing of a dull night's restlessness on each other's bodies. But afterwards, Madam Red had seemed more serious than usual. When Grell closed his eyes, he was almost there again.

Grell felt a prick of discomfort, as close as he came to empathy. "You seem off tonight," he said, never one to mince words. "What's bothering you?"

"What concern is it of yours?" Madam Red asked, fiddling with the corner of a discarded sheet.

Grell paused, surprised. "I am your butler, Madam," he replied, touched with rare seriousness.

"Oh yes," she said, rolling her eyes. "I forgot. You're my 'butler', so you're so interested in my _happiness_, is that it?"

Grell narrowed his eyes. "Yes, I am. I may be a bit more… unconventional than other butlers. I am not meek or subservient by nature. But I am still your butler to die for, and you are my Madam Red. I will take everything I need to ensure your happiness. So tell me," he purred, getting off the bed and on his knees, giving her his best wicked smile, "how may I best serve you, my Lady?"

This type of concession was usually enough to get a smile out of Madam Red, to bring out her lovely sadism and dominance. Tonight, however, she was not to be amused. "There is one thing you can do for me, Grell," she said. "I need you to promise me something." Grell let his smile dropped but stayed kneeling before her, listening. "I need you to promise that if I ever go soft- if I ever lose sight of what we're doing… I need you to promise that you will cut me down, then and there."

Grell looked at her for a moment, then looked away, unable to meet her eyes. "Don't say such things, Madam," he murmured, an edge in his voice. "It's true that I am not your demon, and I am not bound by your orders. But you are my Mistress now. I _will_ do as you bid me. Do not order me so lightly."

Madame Red scowled, grabbed him around the throat, and made him look at her. "Do you think I say this _lightly_?" she hissed. "Do you think I decided on a whim to have you cut me down like a whore? That I thought I'd _like_ to die that way? _Do you?_" She pushed him back, and he stared back at her. He growled, wanting to carve some sense into her, but restrained himself. She lost some anger when she saw the faint red handprint wrapped around his neck. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" Though she fought them, a pair of tears trailed down her cheeks. Normally these tears would seem tacky to him, like they seemed on widows or whores, but on his Mistress, they were shocking, as if water had been wrung from steel. "I just mean that I'm serious. I'm very serious about this."

His Madam sighed deeply, pushing her hair from her face. "I don't want to care for people anymore," she said, "not for anyone. Nothing good has ever come from it. Everyone I loved died, and it only made me feel so blank, so grey, barely alive. When I am with you, I see that I've never felt better. I've felt my worst when I slipped into the tender dull suffering of silent, unrequited love. I want no more dull pain. I want to be red always. I want to burn brightly for as long as I live, carving up the world as I see fit, with nothing standing in my way. I only want to live like this. I'm afraid I could still become weak, still go back into that life, a quiet someone or other suffering for people that don't even _care_, and I'd rather die than live that way. But you, Grell, you don't have to worry about this weakness. So if I start fading, if I ever refuse to choose red over softness, I want you to kill me. I want you to paint me red and live for me, live for what I was. Do you understand?"

"Madam, you don't need to do this," Grell protested. "I have seen you take lives. Your viciousness is perfect, and there is no weakness in you." He touched her knee, fighting the urge to beg. "We are Jack the Ripper, we are the Red, and nothing will stop us-"

"_Grell,_" she said sternly, cutting him off. "I order you to cut me down if I falter. I order you to never let me fade away. Do you understand?"

Their eyes locked for what seemed like a very long time. Grell bowed his head. "Yes, my Lady."

She offered him her hand, which he took, in more awe of his Mistress than he could say. Then they lay in the bed together, kissed almost tenderly, and fell asleep still smelling like each other's sweat.

When Sebastian had asked why a shinigami had decided to become a butler, he had said, "Shall we say for the time being that I fell in love with a woman?" Really, this was more accurate than coy. Grell did not love Madam Red, but that was only because Grell did not love. Grell could admire, yes. Lust, most definitely. Even care, when the situation was right. All of this and more he felt for his Madam, but he was deficient in some of love's key qualities. Grell had no interest growing old with someone, no desire to hold hands on long walks or settle in. All things quiet and peaceful made his skin crawl. The reason he got along so well with his Madam was because she was diseased with the same thrill-seeking madness as him, and the passion of madness never quite allows for love. But, he realized that night with Sebastian and Ciel, he should say that he fell in love with her, for he may as well have. His heart held a passion that was hers alone, and as close as Grell came to love, he came for her.

Still, that didn't stop him from running his chainsaw through the length of her body when she refused to kill the brat. Grell frowned. He'd like to think that he'd have killed her for such weakness even without the order. But somehow, he knew this wasn't true. He would have had to leave her after that, of course. If she wanted to shift into a soft pastel life, he wouldn't have stuck around for the sweet reconciliation. But somewhere, he knew that working alone, he had her same spot of weakness. He too would not have been strong enough to take a life that had grown so close to him. Somewhere deep in her, she had wanted an escape from their world of blood, and he would have given it to her. She could have still been alive, happy, and calling herself Angeline again, had Madam Red not forced him to say, _"Yes, my Lady." _ But she had never allowed him the choice. Like the beauteous red goddess she was, she had ordered him to cut out all weakness. Even hers.

When he had cut into her, she had looked so shocked, so unhappy. This had surprised him for a moment, until he remembered. _Yes, of course she's unhappy now, now that the weakness had tainted her, _he had thought, pulling the chainsaw out of her as she fell to the ground. _But the true Madam Red would have been pleased with me, very pleased._ He had told her that he was disappointed with her, and this was true. She had chosen the child's life over her own, over the life they had created together. She had literally let herself die in the place of an undeserving brat. He had hoped she would have chosen to be selfish, chosen to have a little more fun with him.

He removed a glove to touch the fabric of his coat. It had been hers once. He had given it to her, a shade and style deserving of a beautiful murderess, and taken it from her when the title no longer fit. Grell did not mourn. The thing that bothered him most about death was all the gloom and black, and being sad seemed like a tremendous waste of time. Still, he sometimes missed being with her, fitting with her like they were matching pieces of a jagged puzzle. Even now, he never kept her coat out of sight.

Looking up, Grell saw a man stumble out of a bar and a shadowy mugger following him, the night's only light glinting off of his blade. The drunk was clearly targeted for an untimely death. _Oh, how __**utterly**__ unfortunate._ He grinned, fetching his scissors, tugging on his old Mistress's coat. _If only you could see me now, Madam,_ he thought, leaping into the night. _I'm afraid the night has been less colorful without you. _His grin couldn't have been any wider as he added his own steel and malice to the fray. _Naturally, I will compensate._


End file.
